The March 27, 1931 Lima News (Lima, Ohio) ran a piece titled, "Press the Button and Mechanical Man Will Pop Right Up With Meal." Automation, as we've seen through countless other posts, epitomizes futurism of the 1930s. Robots (a relatively new term in 1931) seemed to often be thrown in for that extra bit of flair.

The machine age is about to take command of the world's largest industry - the $23,000,000,000-a-year restaurant business. Hungry patrons will push various buttons representing items on the menu, their orders will be transmitted electrically to kitchen robots which will prepare their food, deliver it, collect the bills, and carry off the dishes.

Well dim sum and sushi restaurants have conveyor systems for the meals....and I know of at least a few pizza places that use robots to assemble and cook the pizzas. Nothing so fantastical as an entirely automated restaurant, naturally.

There were these vending machine restaurants in the 1930s and '40s called "automats" for a time.

No one anticipated the rise of celebrity chefs and the sheer joy of cooking and eating the old-fashioned way.

BTW, the old print makes it look as if it says the mechanical arm will pour "soap" for the patron -- thatl'll clean her mouth right out. Pigs into a machine would be rather politically incorrect today -- PETA would gag at that cartoon!